


Well, tough luck

by ovely



Category: Sk8er Boi - Avril Lavigne
Genre: Gen, Humour, Investigative Journalism, i have no clue what these characters are called
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5366705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ovely/pseuds/ovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An investigative journalist hears a song on a plane and decides to do some investigative journalism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well, tough luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [innerbrat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/innerbrat/gifts).



> This wasn't the story I intended to write, but on the day I was meaning to write it I ended up buying The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson and reading that instead. Then I thought how it would be pretty funny if a very serious (in multiple senses of the word) investigative journalist like Jon ended up trying to get to the bottom of the story behind the song—and this is the result.
> 
> [Re the RPF aspect of this, please read the mathematical disclaimer.](http://licornoz.livejournal.com/758.html)

I first heard about Jason Lynch and Emmie Davige on a flight to Vancouver. I was on my way to interview Robert T. Lei, the former leader of a notorious sect whose members had once poured three litres of pigs’ blood over a mural depicting several of Canada’s most celebrated prime ministers. I was feeling slightly anxious, not only because I had chosen to wear a new shirt for the occasion but also because I was sitting next to a small child whose mother was at least three rows away. I didn’t want anybody official thinking I had responsibility for the child.

I sat uncomfortably in my seat, trying to avoid eye contact with the child while browsing though the in-flight entertainment. The options were limited: there were a couple of films, but I had seen both before and one had given me nightmares. As for music, there was only one album to listen to, but as I didn’t fancy asking for my complementary magazines back from the child, who had taken them to build some kind of tower, I decided to put it on as a soundtrack to looking out of the window at clouds, which I had decided would form the main activity of my journey.

The music wasn’t particularly to my taste, and I soon grew tired of the sound of the singer, a man who seemed to spend most of his time veering between justified anger and gratuitous obscenity, accompanied by the incongruously inoffensive twang of synthesised instruments.

A few songs in, the clouds had become repetitive and I was startled into taking notice of the music by a new voice. It was a woman. She too did not seem a particularly engaging singer, but I began to pay attention to the words of the song: it was about somebody sitting alone feeding a baby. I thought this an odd juxtaposition with the few lyrics I had registered while hearing the preceding songs. I was about to turn back to the clouds when my attention was caught again by the fact that the lyrics now seemed to be describing some kind of love triangle, and I began to wonder what sort of story this was telling

After listening to the song a few more times, I had developed some kind of interpretation of its content. As I understood it, the singer’s boyfriend—apparently the singer on the rest of the album—had been in some way turned down by another girl, who, the singer conjectured, had become some kind of outcast single mother. It still seemed a peculiar subject. I asked myself whether this might be some version of a true story, and if so, what this might reveal about the singer’s character.

I had done some research on public actions of revenge for an article I had written earlier that year. In archetypal cases, I had discovered, the revenge-taker, encouraged by the opportunity to have their denunciation reach the widest possible audience, would make increasingly exaggerated claims about the object of their revenge, until the extreme characterisation of figures on both sides of the argument would make the whole situation seem ludicrous to any rational observer. Without a return opportunity to issue a public denial, the object of the revenge would remain depicted as a comic-book villain. It was probably fortunate in this case that the girl was identified only by the fact that “she did ballet”.

* * *

That night, in my small, cold Vancouver hotel room, I had a look for the song online. I had written down the name of the man who sang the others on the album—Jason Lynch—and soon discovered that the singer of this song was indeed his girlfriend. Her own music was less well-known—not that I had heard of Jason Lynch before coming across his album—and her name was Emmie Davige.

I began to consider the possibility that the song really did tell a true story. This was the first album Lynch had released since getting together with Davige six months earlier. Initially, he had been talent-spotted at a nondescript high school in the north US two years earlier and had persuaded to drop out of his senior year not long before graduation in order to pursue a full-time career in the music industry. A video interview with Lynch on TMZ showed him ill at ease with the camera, offering mostly monosyllabic replies to the various questions asked of him. “I base all my songs on real life,” was one of his lengthiest utterances. That stuck with me. _I base all my songs on real life._

Davige was two years older than Lynch, and had balanced the first three years of her singing career with college, but had dropped out as a junior to fulfil her ambitions. She had, according to E! Online, met Lynch at a party for artists signed to their record label. Lynch had been a guest of honour. He was nineteen. He had gone home with Davige that night, and since then, she had made no live appearances, nor recorded any new songs, other than the one on Lynch’s new album. I sent an email to Lynch’s agent asking if I might have an interview.

* * *

Two weeks later, in a hotel room in Spain, I had a call from an unknown number. I answered it. It turned out to be someone called Layla Craw, representing Jason Lynch.

“Lynch said that all his songs were based on real life,” I said. “Does this still hold now that his new album has been released?”

“It’s Jason’s USP,” said Craw.

“Is it true of track number seven?” I asked. “The one where Emmie Davige sings?”

“Jason and Emmie wrote the song together,” said Craw. “I’m sure it’s as true to life as any of his other songs.”

I wondered whether, as Lynch’s agent, Craw was spared the task of actually listening to his music.

“Thank you,” I said. “By the way, do you have a number for Emmie Davige’s agent?”

* * *

Emma Davige’s agent rang me just as I was paying a taxi driver in Kiev. It was raining. I called him back once I was in the airport.

“I’m told you want an interview with Emmie,” he said.

“That’s right,” I said. “I wanted to ask about her role in Jason Lynch’s new album.”

There was a tense silence.

“I’m from the _Guardian_ ,” I said.

We arranged an interview for the following Tuesday.

* * *

“Hello, Jon,” said Emmie Davige.

“Hello, Emmie,” I said. “I wanted to ask you about the song you perform on Jason Lynch’s new album. Did you write it together?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He told me the story and then we wrote a song about it.”

“Did he say it was based on real life?” I asked.

“It was about this girl he was at high school with,” she replied.

“OK, thank you,” I said. Emmie Davige, on the phone at least, was a lot less interesting than the internet had made her out to be.

* * *

Jason Lynch had attended Plum Trees high school in the town of Redford, Nebraska. The school’s website still had an archive of news articles from his time there. Two links down from “Jason Signed By Top Label” was “Rachel and Sammy Win Ballet Competition”. It turned out that Rachel and Sammy were sisters. Rachel Tsoulas had been in the same grade as Lynch; Sammy was three years younger. They had been the only competitors from Plum Trees at a statewide dance festival that had gone on a whole week. Sammy had won the freshman class, Rachel had come third in the senior class, and together they had won the duet class.

It looked like Rachel Tsoulas was the only one of Jason’s contemporaries who might have earned the name “ballet girl”.

* * *

Two weeks later, I had found Rachel Tsoulas on Facebook and asked whether I might be able to speak to her. She had agreed that I could call her on a Thursday evening. I was sitting in a fourth-floor hotel room in Brussels looking out of the window over a Christmas market. The sharp smell of roast chestnuts and mulled wine drifted up to my room. I couldn’t concentrate. I closed the window and turned my back to it. Then I called Rachel Tsoulas.

“Hello, Rachel,” I said. “I’m an investigative journalist. I just wanted to ask you a few questions. Are you in college?”

“Yes, I’m majoring in electrical engineering,” said Rachel.

“Electrical engineering,” I said. “Do you still do ballet?”

“Sometimes,” said Rachel.

I looked down at my notebook. I had written _she sits at home feeding the baby?_ and underlined it.

“Do you have any children?” I said.

“No,” said Rachel.

“I see,” I said. “You went to school with Jason Lynch, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “He was an asshole.”

“What did he think of you?” I asked.

“He didn’t like me,” she replied. “Like, we didn’t really know each other until senior year, then he suddenly started hanging around near me and my friends, and we all thought his music was crap, and in the end we realised he had a thing for my sister, which was kind of wrong because she was a freshman and _tiny_.”

“Oh,” I said.

There was a pause. I looked down at my notebook again.

“Does your sister have children?” I asked.

“She’s still in high school!” said Rachel.

There was another pause.

“No,” she said.

“Great, thank you,” I said.


End file.
